Did you know that the spooky has also been tied up, shall we say, with the sexy for oh so many years. So today prepare your loins to be aquiver as I tell you of some shocking gothic classics from the 18th and 19th centuries. Beware my children these stories contain vampires, and ghosts, and monsters – oh my.

First off is The Monk: A Memoir by Matthew Lewis. Not the most promising naughty title I’ll grant you but this little ditty from 1796 is amazeballs. Lewis was 19 when he wrote it and well it’s like a 19 year old’s dirty movie of ridiculous gothic silliness and death. It was scandalous when it came out. Mostly because fornicating nuns. Seriously.
Everyone has fantastic tragic backstories, there are secret pregnancies, mysteries prophecies, everyone is shagging everyone else, and everyone and everything is awful. Somehow it all makes sense at the time like the most insane soap opera populated by nuns and the cast of The Borgias. Yeaaaaaas. You will love it.

And then comes Carmilla by J Sheridan Le Fanu. Who just has the best name. It’s from the 1870s and it’s about a young beautiful girl called Carmilla who because of dramatic circumstances comes to stay at the secluded house of an English gentleman and his pretty innocent daughter Laura.

Laura and Carmilla become desperately,passionately just good friends. And then Laura starts having the strangest dreams and Carmilla really does have palest skin, and the reddest lips. And what could possibly be going on?

And to, erm, finish us off may I suggest The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen from 1897. Machen isn’t hugely well known but he’s incredibly influential in the horror genre. he was one of the biggest inspirations for H.P. Lovecraft’s whole schtick, and Stephen King is huge fan.

It tells of weird science done on a dark dark night where an old god is called down onto the body of an innocent(ish) woman who nine months later gives birth to a girl. And then the horror begins as a beautiful girl grows up and tempts and corrupts and terrifies those around her.

I mean, a woman who likes sex?! How can such a monstrous creature be defeated? Read this book to find out.

And there you have it. A few suggestions for a shiveringly good time this Halloween. What are you going to be reading on that dark dark night? I know what my plans are!